From the Ice

The Weber State University Hockey Team finished the three-game weekend with a 1-2 record. We failed to defeat the No. 2-ranked Eastern Washington University Eagles Friday night and Sunday afternoon. However, we did beat Metro State University Saturday afternoon at the E-Center in Salt Lake City. Our team was very motivated going into the weekend; with a chance to move up the rankings, all three games were big for us.
Friday night’s game against EWU was very disappointing; we came out flat and never created enough momentum to get ourselves in the game. We committed a few defensive breakdowns that led to some earlier goals and we got ourselves behind the 8-ball. Although we were only down 2-1 going into the second period, we couldn’t generate offense and capitalize on our scoring opportunities to tie the game up. We also took some unnecessary penalties that put us in short-handed situations. The final score was 10-2, which was our worst loss of the year. Our team never really got into a rhythm and it hurt us. Head Coach Steve Soto was furious with our lackluster performance. He said we needed to put the loss behind us and focus on the next game against Metro.
The game Saturday against Metro had an entirely different feel to it. Guys were more positive on the bench and worked harder for each other on the ice. We got behind on the score board 0-2, but bounced back with two quick goals only 30 seconds apart to tie the game up before the end of the first period. We continued to work hard and stay focused throughout the and it paid off as we defeated the Roadrunners 7-3. Freshman forward Braxton Green notched five goals in this contest and led our team to a much-needed victory.
By the time we reached Sunday’s game against EWU we were all quite fatigued and didn’t skate as well as we wanted to. However, we came out hard and had a couple of good early scoring chances but failed to execute them. Even though we outshot EWU 36-33 we lost the game 10-3. The loss hurt pretty bad, but we learned a lot about what the team needs to improve on for the future.
The losses against EWU were wakeup calls for us; we needed to refocus our energy and become recommitted to the things that make us successful. Being disciplined in our defensive zone and offensive zone are some things we will be working on over the course of the next few weeks.
We have two weeks before our next games in Arizona against the University of Arizona on the 4th and 5th of December. Our team is going to take these next two weeks to examine the problems that contributed to the losses over the weekend and correct them. We want to be as prepared as possible for the next road trip in order to get our team back to a winning record.